Hello, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Canton (canton@gmail.com) will be adding additional 2018 calendar events (meteor showers, etc.) during the last week of 2017. Feel free to email him any suggestions. If you added this ICS calendar feed as a “subscription” instead of a one-time import, then new events should automatically...

The Geminids is the king of the meteor showers. It is considered by many to be the best shower in the heavens, producing up to 120 multicolored meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced by debris left behind by an asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered...

The Ursids is a minor meteor shower producing about 5-10 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tuttle, which was first discovered in 1790. The shower runs annually from December 17-25. It peaks this year on the the night of the 21st and morning...

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, respectively, in the sense that the length of time elapsed between sunrise and sunset on this day is a minimum for the year. Of course, daylight saving time means that the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the...

The Ursids is a minor meteor shower producing about 5-10 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tuttle, which was first discovered in 1790. The shower runs annually from December 17-25. It peaks this year on the the night of the 21st and morning of the 22nd. The crescent moon will set early in the evening leaving dark skies for optimal observing. Best viewing will be just after midnight from a dark location far away from city lights. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Ursa Minor, but can appear anywhere in the sky.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, respectively, in the sense that the length of time elapsed between sunrise and sunset on this day is a minimum for the year. Of course, daylight saving time means that the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the last Sunday in October has 25 hours, but these human meddlings with the calendar and do not correspond to the actual number of daylight hours.

If you life in the southern hemisphere, this is your Summer Solstice, celebrating the longest day of the year.

This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Full Wolf Moon because this was the time of year when hungry wolf packs howled outside their camps. Supermoons may appear a little bigger and brighter than usual, as the moon will be closer than usual to Earth.

The Quadrantids meteor shower can yield as many as 40 meteors per hour, radiating from the constellation Bootes. It peaks this year on the night of the 3rd and morning of the 4th. Bummer though: this will occur during a nearly full moon, so all but the brightest meteors will be washed out. Still, looking up at the sky isn’t a bad way to start the new year!

Well, happy new year 5 days late. This note is from Canton, the fellow who maintains the astronomical events calendar on your phone/computer/brain implant. I’ve just added all the meteor showers and grand celestial events for 2018. There might be a couple of errors (which I’ll fix and update later) as I was rushing to put this together while in the passenger seat of a van speeding towards the Very Large (radio telescope) Array in New Mexico on New Year’s Eve…

OF PARTICULAR INTEREST is the night of July 27th, when you can witness all this at once: A full moon! A total lunar eclipse! Mars at it’s brightest! A meteor shower! That’s a helluva night, so you might want to make plans now to get yourself somewhere special on that evening.

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